Affiliate Networks & Digital Product Networks are ideal for affiliate marketers looking for easy access to tons of products that they can promote and help their readers. But is ClickBetter a good option for you, or is there anything that you need to be concerned about?
First off, it’s great to see that you’re doing your research before buying into any “seemingly good” product.
To be completely transparent with you, we’re not associated with ClickBetter in any form.
We’re not here to pitch or sell you anything. Instead we’re here to ensure you get the full lowdown on this digital marketplace.
The short story here is that ClickBetter is not a great option for you and our review will show you why we feel this marketplace is full of scams and low-quality products that are likely to hinder your progress, instead of speeding it up…
Affiliate Marketing is one of the best ways to make money online and if you have been considering if CBD Oil might be a good niche to choose for it. Well, we have come up with a list of the top CBD Oil Affiliate Programs. We do not know a lot about CBD Oil, but we do know a lot about affiliate marketing. Let’s get into it…
Finding the right affiliate programs is essential to pushing your affiliate marketing business forward, but it is not actually that quick or easy to find the right affiliate program for your business.
Before we get into any detail about how to find the right affiliate programs, let’s just clarify your understanding of what exactly is affiliate marketing.
There are plenty of platforms out there stating they are teaching you affiliate marketing and yet, when we check them out, they are actually a MLM program or Multi-Layer- Marketing.
MLM is where your only focus is on recruiting people up the ladder, so you earn more money. They are typically associated with scams and are not normally offering any value. This leads you to believing affiliate marketing doesn’t work when in reality, it was nothing like real affiliate marketing.
Let’s briefly explain what affiliate marketing so we can then explain what affiliate programs are and how to find them like a pro!
Michael Cheney makes some bold claims with his Commission Machine system, but we ask the question is the commission machine a scam or can you really earn $2k a day through it??
Michael’s claims of earning $2642.60 per day, even if you are a complete newbie with no money, experience and no email list.
But here is the flaw, you are expecting people with no money to pay for your program? That is a big contradiction, and it is just the start of the problems with this program.
There is also the issue with all the hype around this product, it can easily just assume the Commission machine is just another scam. But we have dug deep into the product to check it out.
Product Type: Affiliate Marketing & Email Marketing Video Course
Price: $47 + Upsells & Recurring Fees
Best For: Affiliate Marketers with a little more experience
BestAffiliateMarketingTools.org Rating: 2.5/5
A Quick Commission Machine Summary
The Commission Machine is a video course teaching people how to write effective emails and how to promote affiliate products on JVZoo. But without any training on how to generate any traffic or tools to create your own landing page or funnel, it will not benefit a beginner looking for a way of making money online. Only those who already know how to generate traffic, etc will benefit from this video course.
Recommended: No
What Exactly is Commission Machine & How Does it Work?
Commission Machine is a 7-module video training course with a focus on teaching effective email marketing and how to monetise your email list using Affiliate Marketing. Commission Machine tends to target affiliate products through JVZoo, which is an affiliate network.
How Does Email Marketing Work?
If you are a little unsure how email marketing works, email marketing works through the following:
Drive Traffic to Your Landing Page
Offer a Free Gift & Collect an Email Address
Follow-up Emails & Build a Relationship
Monetise Your List by Promoting Relevant Products
You will need to create a landing page to collect email addresses from your visitors, but whilst Michael touches on this subject. It is very brief, and he doesn’t provide you with the tools to create a landing page.
Once you have your landing page, you need to drive traffic to your landing page.
But again, Michael only touches on the subject about driving free traffic using Facebook, but this is not as reliable as you might think.
Michael also misses out key information about other forms of free or paid traffic too.
The third step, all around the following emails and converting emails is where Michael has put a lot of his focus, and the Commission Machine does offer a lot of value in this area.
But, know that you will need to invest in a 3rd party autoresponder, like Aweber in order to be able to send these automated emails.
The last step is where you send promotional emails to your subscribers with affiliate products from JVZoo, with the aim that they make a purchase and you earn commission from the sale.
Michael does teach you how to find profitable affiliate products to promote, he also offers email templates to sell them to your email list too.
That is the basics of how Commission Machine Works.
The 7-Module Course looks like this, with how long each module is too:
Module 1 – Introduction (3:11)
Module 2 – Research (28:28)
Module 3 – Angle (24:10)
Module 4 – Providing Incentives (23:24)
Module 5 – Messages (46:53)
Module 6 – Deploy (28:43)
Module 7 – No List Method (13:38)
I am not sure how much content you were expecting for $47, but I am certain you were not expecting a course that only lasted less than 3 hours?
If I compare this to our No.1 Recommended Training platform, Wealthy Affiliate offers over 50 core training lessons, which takes weeks to complete along with the tasks that are set out to complete – I know which a more comprehensive training for a beginner is.
Michael’s method for making money is called the R.A.P.I.D method, which stands for
Research
Angle
Provide Incentive
Deploy
Step One – Research
Michael teaches you how to choose profitable affiliate products from JVZoo to promote, but the thing I do not like about his training is that he recommends you promote Internet marketing & Make Money Online products, because he says they are the most profitable…
The reason I say that I don’t really agree is, that you should only promote products that you know are genuine and right for people and not base it solely on profitability.
There is also the fact he only promotes products available on JVZoo and doesn’t talk about any other affiliate networks either.
Step Two – Angle
This step is all about your positioning, how to position yourself and your offers to grab the attention and hook them into buying your offer. He will show you case studies and the email templates he uses.
Step Three – Provide Incentive
This step entails how to make your affiliate offer irresistible to stop them going elsewhere to but the products.
This is about getting them to follow your offers and not anyone else’s. Typically, with bonuses or incentives when they buy from you.
This is one of the good things about the Commission Machine.
Step Four – Deploy
This stage is all around taking actions and creating your own sales funnel.
This is also when you need to get your own tools such as your autoresponder. Michael recommends you get the autoresponder from GetResponse.
When you consider the concepts behind the Commission Machine, you will find these are very basic. More advanced marketers will find this very basic and not worth their time, they will not learn anything really from this training.
Beginners will get lost without a more detailed training in the overall affiliate marketing world.
Who Will Benefit from the Commission Machine?
This is the conundrum, who will benefit from this…
On a simple level, it seems like it is aimed at beginners as he offers a step-by-step training that is suitable for beginners.
But if you lack knowledge in some of the basics of internet marketing, you will not find this training course very beneficial.
The more experience marketers will already know much of what Michael is talking about, so again it is not really a benefit to them.
But there are the upsells to consider, and I think that is where the benefit is, but again an extra cost.
How Much Does Commission Machine Cost?
On the surface it looks like the Commission Machine is $47, but there are immediate upsells when you sign up and there are hidden costs that are not mentioned.
The Commission Machine Upsells
IN the Commission Machine they are sold as One-Time-Offers:
The Golden Ticket
This is a membership product which will cost you $27/month or a one-time lifetime access price of $197.
This grants you access to Michael’s monthly LIVE websinar, where you can see how Michael creates his commission machine live. This refers to his sales funnel setup for email marketing and affiliate marketing campaigns.
You will also receive a monthly done-for-you sales funnel, created by Michael.
This actually seems like a better deal than the main product, if I am honest.
If you pass this up, you will actually get what is called a downsell and it is again for the Golden ticket, but this time is only $17/month or $124 for lifetime access. The difference is you receive a recording of the webinar, and it is not live.
Regardless of whether you pass these up or not, you will then see their second upsell:
Commissionology
At this point you have not got to the members area, and you will need to see all of these upsells before proceeding and commissionology is a $97 done-for-you service.
These are 7 DFY sales funnels that are ready for you to put into action. You will also receive messages and email templates as well as some other bonuses.
Hidden Costs of Commission Machine
The hidden costs come from the fact Commission Machine does not provide you with an autoresponder, a tool to manage your email campaigns. They also do not provide you with the tools necessary to create landing pages or sales funnels.
What is Good About Commission Machine (PROS)
Here is what we liked about it:
Step-by-Step Training
The step-by-step training provided within Commission Machine is good and the concepts are really clear, so a beginner can understand them.
The video quality is surprisingly good, and Michaels presents himself well too.
Michael Does Know His Stuff
If you have taken a look at the Commission Machine Sales page, you will see Michael has bragged a lot about how he has won all the contests with well-known internet Marketers such as Anik Singal, Omar Martin and John Thornhill.
From what he teaches, he does show he knows his stuff about email marketing and affiliate marketing in general.
The thing that lets him down is the way he is selling it as a ‘get-rich-quick’ scheme. Neither of these routes are going to earn money quickly like Michael says it is.
Truly, if you feel Email Marketing is right for you Anik Singal’s Inbox Blueprint is by far a better product, check out my Inbox Blueprint review.
30-Day Money Back Guarantee
As Commission Machine is a JVZoo product, you get backed by a 30-day money back guarantee
What Could Commission Machine Improve on? (CONS)
Here is what we didn’t like:
Too Much Hype & Testimonials
It is annoying when a sales page is constantly going on about how good it is, with testimonials coming out of our ears without a singly insight into how the program actually works.
He misses out the key ingredients about how his method works, and how you can benefit from it.
Michael uses this to his advantage to sell this product to people who are not entirely sure but believe the hype.
You Will Still Need a List!
From the start Michael mentions that even a complete newbie without an email list can still benefit from his course.
But, the sole focus of the Commission Machine is Email marketing. Michael teaches a little about how to start building your own list, but the training is too basic to really benefit a beginner.
Whilst his last module is called the No-List Method, it is only a 13-minute video. The focus of those 13 minutes is to utilise Facebook to get leads and sale. But I have found Facebook is not that reliable.
Hidden Costs
Commission Machine does not provide you with an autoresponder, so you will need to invest in one to utilise the training.
You will also require tools to be able to build a landing page and sales funnel.
You will also come up against upsells as soon as you pay the initial $47.
No Traffic = No Sales
Michael does not go into any kind of detail when it comes to driving traffic to your sales funnels. But traffic is the most important part of any online business.
If you have no traffic, you have no business or sales.
No Website?
Whilst email marketing is effective, it is much better to have your own website, you can utilise email marketing into your website. But to have just a single landing page is a huge gamble for a beginner. If it doesn’t work, you are out of pocket.
Having a website, allows you to go down all kinds of routes to monetising your business.
High Refund Rate
The refund rate through JVZoo for the Commission Machine is surprisingly high and shows how this does not benefit the beginner. They are finding that out by paying for it and having to go and ask for a refund.
JVZoo does make this easier to facilitate, but either way shows this is not a quality training for a beginner.
My Honest Opinion of Commission Machine? Is Commission Machine a Scam?
Commission Machine is definitely not a scam, it offers some quality training and the strategies do work – List Building, Email Marketing and Affiliate Marketing.
The biggest problem with this product is that it is not detailed enough. It doesn’t cover some very important aspects of these strategies. You cannot miss out traffic generation and building landing pages, and say this product is comprehensive enough.
You will only really benefit from CM, if you purchase the upsells. But then there is still no guarantee it will work for you.
Michael only seems to teach you the theory and misses out the practical aspects that are so important for a beginner.
A more experienced marketer will know the elements required that Michael only touches on, but Michael treats it like everyone will know this stuff and that is clearly the mistake he makes with this product.
Product Type: Affiliate Marketing & Email Marketing Video Course
Price: $47 + Upsells & Recurring Fees
Best For: Affiliate Marketers with a little more experience
Recommended: No
BestAffiliateMarketingTools.org Rating: 2.5/5
Verdict: Not Comprehensive Enough to Benefit Beginners
If you really want to make money online, affiliate marketing and email marketing are really effective but not with this training. You could really benefit from a comprehensive training platform like Wealthy Affiliate. Within a few lessons, you could have your very own affiliate marketing website ready to drive traffic to your sales funnels and make some real money.
Wealthy Affiliate has helped thousands of beginners become affiliate marketers, and you can really benefit from their tuition.
Thanks for reading my review, if you have any questions or want to share your experiences, please write them in the comments and I will come back to you as soon as I can.
If you have been thinking of joining Wealthy Affiliate or have recently joined and still wonder how is it possible to make money with Wealthy Affiliate? I am here to help you answer those questions… the Main purpose of becoming a Wealthy Affiliate member is to make money and their training is top notch, but how exactly do you make money???
In this post I will share with you the ways you can earn money from following their training and from outside sources. But also, how you can actually make money within their platform too. (Yes, you can make money within WA too!)
I have been a member since 2016 and know my way around the platform really well, and in total there are 8 different ways to make money with Wealthy Affiliate.
Like I said there are 2 main ways to earn money from Wealthy Affiliate, within the platform and from following their training. We will be focusing on the external sources of income first.
Ways to Earn Money from Wealthy Affiliate’s Training
Their training is perfect for people first stepping out of their comfort zone and looking to earn money online. The training focuses on building up an online business foundation, giving you all the tips and experience that Kyle and Carson (the owners) have built up over the years.
You will not meet a nicer couple of guys who really focus on paying-it-forward. The training is upfront and takes you step-by-step through the process needed to make a business that is built for the long run.
Going through building a website, creating content, building up traffic and ultimately monetising that website. You are truly in great hands with Wealthy Affiliate’s training.
Let’s get back to how you will make money from this training.
Affiliate Programs
Affiliate Marketing is the primary focus and the way many WA members are earning money from following the training.
Affiliate programs are set up by companies who pay people commissions for promoting their products and making sales.
Most retailers are utilising this method as it is a much cheaper way to promote then multi-million-dollar advertising campaigns. Amazon, the world’s largest marketplace actually uses an affiliate program and is a common partner to many affiliate marketers across the world.
How it Works – you promote a product available on amazon via a blog, someone visits your blog and decides to buy that product, they get taken to amazon and buy the product. You have just earned commission.
Example – You create a health and fitness blog, and join an affiliate program like Webvitamins and promote a number of their products. You could always join Amazon too and promote relevant products on your blog. Any time someone completes a purchase, that is how you will be making your money.
There are literally tons of affiliate programs out there in any niche, meaning you can choose any of your interests or hobbies to earn from affiliate marketing.
As a rule of thumb, it is best to diversify your earning potential. Don’t just stick with promoting one product from one affiliate program. You want to ensure that if one product does disappear, you will not be affected as you will just rely on the other products whilst constantly looking for new opportunities.
Awesome for Beginners – Affiliate Marketing is a great way to get started in the online world, it is the starting point for many online marketers who can the progress into other ways of marketing. It is low cost and simple to implement (with the right training).
Low Cost – You do not need a lot of money to get started with affiliate marketing, you can even get started for free with Wealthy Affiliate. WA will provide you with a free website and some free training to get going. You will need to invest some money at some point, but that is only to realise the potential of affiliate marketing. Affiliate programs are typically free to join too.
The Premise is Simple – There is a lot of time and hard work to affiliate marketing, but it is a really simple premise to get your head around. Promote other people’s products and earn money from it. You just need the right training to ensure it works out for you
Once you are starting to get traffic through, you can start to see your affiliate marketing campaigns starting to take off. It also gives you another opportunity to earn money through having ads on your website.
The usual starting point is Google Ads, but when you reach a certain traffic point you can start using better higher-paying options like MediaVine and Monumetric.
But Google Ads is popular as you don’t particularly need a high level of traffic to add it to your website.
With Google Adsense, they ask you to insert a code into your website header and the ads will be displayed automatically.
The key to success with affiliate marketing and ads is to not saturate your website with ads, otherwise your affiliate campaigns might get lost in the mix. But this doesn’t mean ads aren’t good for your website.
The fact is, not everyone will visit your website and click on your affiliate links. They might be having second thoughts or are not ready to make a purchase yet. You can still earn from ads being on your website. But again, if your blog is written well and is engaging your audience, you shouldn’t have to worry about ads distracting from your affiliate promotions.
CPA Offers
Cost Per Action offers are also an opportunity to monetise your website. Whilst they are not going to earn you a high amount, they can still be quite lucrative. Small amounts can easily mount up and CPA offers are something that you should consider once you have traffic coming to your website built with WA.
CPA offers pay you when someone completes an action, not necessarily needing to buy something. They just need to complete an action, such as:
Sign up for an email list
Register an account
Sign up for a free trial
Use a comparison site
They are normally easy to monetise, as they are normally free for the people to do. But they do not pay as much as affiliate marketing opportunities typically do.
Ecommerce
There isn’t as much focus on ecommerce within WA, but you can still find member created training on ways to do it. If you have your own product or want to consider drop shipping, the training and the tools they offer are still relevant for you.
We used a lot of the training to launch Gem’s wedding stationary business which uses a combination of our own products, affiliate marketing and drop shipping all in one.
The website you create on the WA platform is run by WordPress, so all you would need to do install a plugin like Woocommerce, which again is covered in the training available on WA to allow you to sell products directly and process the payments.
Whilst most who join WA do not have products to sell and are more interested in affiliate marketing, we still get asked questions about whether you can, and the answer is always Yes!
You can definitely make good money using ecommerce, but there are complications with it in a way that you wouldn’t find with affiliate marketing.
The main is you are dealing with the customers direct, so you need to be great at customer service for a start. Affiliate Marketing, they deal with the seller and not you.
Ways to Earn Money Within Wealthy Affiliate itself!
There are also ways to earn money within Wealthy Affiliate, and we will share these options below.
WA Affiliate Program
WA has an awesome affiliate program, which many members like the look of if you want to promote Wealthy Affiliate itself.
Whilst it is available to members straightaway, it is honestly better to wait and promote it once you have already found some success within another niche, purely as it will help you have some proof it works before promoting it.
But having said, that it is one of the best paying affiliate programs out there and even free starter members can benefit from it.
Any member will earn a recurring payment for every new member they introduce that goes premium. If they stay premium, you will earn money each month they stay a premium member. There is also a recurring payment if they go annual too.
Even free starter membership can benefit from referring new members, whilst the commission rates are lower many use it to pay for their premium membership. They also run an incentive program for those that achieve 300 premium referrals in a calendar year. They fly you out to Las Vegas to meet with Kyle, Carson and other Super Affiliates to learn how you can better scale your business.
Earning Cash Credits & Affiliate Credits
Inside WA there are two types of credit, you can earn. These are called Cash Credits & Affiliate Credits. These come from actions taken from members inside WA, once they are already members.
These credits can be redeemed for real money deposited into a PayPal account, or can be used for the benefit of your website. For example, you can use these credits to request comments, buy domains, get feedback, etc. A recent change has also meant you can use these credits to pay for your premium membership with Wealthy Affiliate.
These are not just a currency within WA, each credit is worth $0.50 and can be cashed out for real cash.
Earn from Writing Comments
One of the best features of the website tools that WA provide is the Site Comments platform. If you are unsure of how important comments are on your website, let me tell you that they are so important to help build trust with the search engines and your audience. But a new website doesn’t have comments, and readers can be a little unsure of a blog without any interaction.
The site comments platform allows you to use these credits you earn to get high-quality comments from Wealthy Affiliate members. This is a great way of using your credits, but it also an opportunity to earn money from giving comments.
A change last year made it that once you had given 50 comments within a 30-day period, you started earning cash credits. You already earn credits for giving out comments, but this was another way of earning money within WA.
Earn from Creating Training
Member created training is something that is encouraged within WA, as there are all types of people with experience in different elements and sharing that experience with a well-written training is rewarded with cash credit.
The core training is built by Kyle (the co-owner of WA) and Jay does a live training video every week, but the majority of the other training has been created by members of WA.
If you are experience in social media marketing, or wordpress you can create a relevant training video that will benefit other members and earn these cash credits.
You can add video tutorials, written guides, etc. and depending on the interaction with your training will determine how many credits you can earn.
Please note – you need to have been a Premium Member for 3 months to be able to create training.
Domain Registrations
Wealthy Affiliate is also a domain registrar, much like GoDaddy is. This means that you can buy domains (websites) directly through WA. There are a lot of benefits to hosting a website on WA’s servers. You are getting a premium hosting service included in your membership, which would normally cost about $250/month.
The cash credits come in useful as you can use these to buy your domains and renew your domains.
But you also earn whenever one of your referrals buys a domain. You will earn 2 cash credits for this, valued at a $1.
There is not much you can do to earn this, but whenever your referrals do buy a domain, you will earn from this. This way of earning goes along nicely with the WA Affiliate Program.
Account Setup Credits
Whenever you introduce a new member to WA, there is a step that makes sure they are a real person. This is a stage where you add an image and create a description for your WA profile.
When they complete this step, you again earn 2 cash credits, valued at a $1.
This stage is all about making sure they are happy interacted with the platform and will definitely receive more support from us within WA.
Kyle & Carson are always looking at ways to improve the platform, and like the change with the Site Comments platform there may become other ways to earn money through WA in the future.
Making Money within the Platform vs Off the Platform
Let’s just clarify the ways you can earn from Wealthy Affiliate.
Here are the ways you can earn within WA:
WA Affiliate Program
Creating Training
Writing Comments
Domain Registration
Account Setup
Here are the ways you can earn from going through their training:
Other Affiliate Programs
Advertising (Google Ads, etc.)
CPA Offers
Ecommerce
What is the Best Way to Earn?
So, at this point you might be thinking which is the best way to earn online? Which path should you be focusing on? My advice would be to focus on Affiliate Marketing first. Most affiliates, including us are earning most of our money from affiliate marketing.
Without traffic, you will not earn anything from ads or CPA offers.
Affiliate Marketing will help you gain the traffic to earn from these additional sources of income.
The main focus of the training at Wealthy Affiliate is on Affiliate Marketing and ads, so you are in a prime place to be able to earn well from these 2 sources in the future.
Another key point of affiliate marketing is the fact that this is an easier path to explore than other forms of marketing and are a really good source of income too.
Pro Tips to Earn with Wealthy Affiliate!
I also want to share with you 3 tips to ensure you do earn from Wealthy Affiliate:
No.1 – Avoid the Shiny Objects and Stick to the Training! The training is set out in the perfect way to get you started on the right foot. If you gloss over things or miss something out you will feel the pain from it. It is so easy to try something that isn’t in the training because you think it will speed up the process, but it ends up being a waste of your time.
Follow the training to the letter!
No.2 – Choose a Niche You Actually Like: If you focus solely on earning money, you will normally find that it doesn’t end up working. Choosing a niche that you actually like will pay dividends in the long run.
If you go and choose a niche, solely because you think it is lucrative means you can end up being burned out and bored of the subject before you even make any money with it.
I have made this mistake and ran out of stuff to write about and wasn’t inclined to write anymore. This meant I had to start again from scratch.
No.3 Patience is So Important! You have to be so patient for this to work. Affiliate Marketing is an awesome way to earn money from something that you love, but it will not be a quick thing.
There is no other way around it, Wealthy Affiliates offers great training to achieve success with Affiliate Marketing, but do not expect it to pay back after a couple of weeks.
The concept of earning from an online business is different to a normal job. In a normal job you complete an hour work and get paid for that hour’s work. An entrepreneur will work for no return, but in the long run it will pay back 10x. A single article could and does earn affiliate marketer’s money for years. But it takes time to get to that stage.
Is Digital Experts Academy a Scam? Is it full of training material and will make you an instant success? We will be answering all of your questions within this Digital Experts Academy review.
Is it really worth the high price tag, or are there better alternatives out there…?
First off, I must congratulate you on doing your research, as that is the best way of avoiding scams and finding genuine ways to make money online. I am not affiliated with Digital Experts Academy in any way, I just want to help people with my review.
Let’s crack on with the review so you can learn more about the Digital Experts Academy.
With the changeover from Commission Junction to CJ Affiliate by Conversant, I can totally understand why you might be asking What is CJ Affiliate by Conversant About?
First off, it’s great to see that you’re doing your research before buying into any “seemingly good” product.
To be completely transparent with you, we’re not associated with CJ Affiliate in any form. We’re not here to pitch or sell you anything.
Instead, I have taken the time to research this affiliate network and want to share with you what I found out about this established Affiliate Network. I will also address all the bad press that has followed over from the change from Commission Junction too.
If you have been looking into some affiliate networks to use within your affiliate marketing business, then you might ask yourself what is ShareASale about?
Being an affiliate marketing network for quite a while, it has plenty to offer but is it worth your precious time?
In this review I have gone through everything that a potential affiliate partner would be asking themselves before joining.
Your chosen niche will ultimately determine what is the best affiliate marketing program for beginners and for you. But knowing what to look for and the differences will be a major factor in whether it is the right affiliate program for you. Relevance and Quality will be some things that you are looking for when deciding.
Before we delve into the best affiliate marketing programs for beginners, let’s just cover what exactly is affiliate marketing and also how it differs from referral marketing.
What Exactly is Affiliate Marketing?
The simplest way I can describe affiliate marketing is that it is where you (an affiliate) receive a commission for introducing a buyer to a product or service. Affiliate marketing is quite a broad statement as it can also include receiving a commission for referring someone to signing up to a program, for example a training platform.
Let’s use an example for the product side. You have a niche focusing on bean coffee machines. You have done the hard work and built up your audience and you have signed up to a retailer (Amazon, for example) selling the coffee machines that you are writing reviews and articles about.
Your audience decide they want to purchase said coffee machine after reading your review and follow your link to the retailer. If they decide to purchase that coffee machine, you receive a percentage commission on the sale. That is exactly how affiliate marketing works.
Referral Marketing works the same way, let me us Swagbucks as an example.
Swagbucks is a website where you can earn a little money from completing surveys, watching online videos. That sort of thing. If you were to refer someone to join up with Swagbucks, you get a reward. In this instance it is SB points, that when you reach a certain amount you can cash out for giftcards, etc.
In essence, they are both affiliate marketing – but the rewards are typically where you see the difference.
Referral Marketing vs Affiliate Marketing
Some will describe both as affiliate marketing, and they would be right. But I do like to differentiate the two, as understanding both of them in the right way will end up earning you more conversions.
If you solely worked on just products and services in your niche, you are missing out on a big chunk of potential sales. If you are in the making money online niche, you might not consider referring someone to survey sites as worth your time – but everyone is different, and these survey sites would not be around if people were not signing up. Whilst most of us are looking for ways to replace the job. Some are quite content with relieving boredom and earning a few extra pounds completing a survey.
Another one, I never consider really was a website like Udemy.com. You can actually become an affiliate with promote training lessons.
Whatever your niche, it is worthwhile checking out what courses they have to offer and see whether it fits with your chosen niche.
Affiliate Marketing Programs for Beginners
Before I share with you some beginner friendly affiliate marketing programs, I want to just take a moment to mention relevance and quality. Remember that anyone who visits your website is looking for help and guidance, and they will be put off by low quality products or stuff that isn’t even relevant to what they were looking for.
The reason I say this is, I have seen a number of affiliate marketers choosing to promote something because it has a high commission rate. But they aren’t making any conversions. I would rather have a relevant product earning 4% commission on my website and it get conversions, than a product with a 70% commission rate that doesn’t get any sales and has nothing to do with my audience.
That is why we choose a niche, and not start too broad. We need to become an authority in that niche and keep it fully on topic to earn the trust of anyone reading our blog. Otherwise it is game over.
That is why I am going to suggest when first starting out you start with affiliate programs that fit in with your brand, will be relevant to your audience and have products or services you yourself would use. You cannot promote something just because of the commission rate, you need to promote something that you believe in.
Affiliate Programs or Networks to Try
When you start researching into affiliate programs you will soon see that there 2 places to try. One is an affiliate network, this is where they have teamed up with a number of sellers to offer their affiliate program. Instead of signing up with 10 different affiliate programs, you just have one log-in to worry about. Share a Sale or Awin would be an example of this.
An affiliate program is one that is offered by an individual seller, Amazon for example.
If you are targeting a niche with a product base, then you really shouldn’t overlook Amazon or eBay. The Amazon Associates or eBay Partner affiliate programs are free to join and have an endless number of products or services that you can search through.
It also becomes an awesome way of researching your niche. I bet there will be more products on offer than you might think and will give you more ideas on what to write about and promote.
eBay is quite easy to work with and it is no longer just about second-hand merchandise. Gem’s wedding stationary business is mainly geared through eBay, so it will definitely be one to look at.
Amazon – it depends on where you are and where you are promoting products. Amazon.com, the worldwide website needs two qualifying sales within 6 months to stay an active affiliate. You can re-register straight away, but it is a bit of a faff. Personally, I would wait until you are starting to see traffic to your website. Once you start getting people regularly hitting your website, then I would sign up.
The other way you can see what affiliate programs are out there is using Google.
Just type your niche + affiliate programs. So, back to the bean coffee machine niche idea, here is what came up when I searched that + affiliate programs.
Signing up with smaller companies, sometimes yields better results and higher commissions. They are also not always as picky. There are affiliate programs out there that will not accept you until you are hitting a certain level of traffic, so it is always worthwhile researching and reading as much about the affiliate programs as you can.
Don’t be afraid to send an email and ask questions, if the answer isn’t forthcoming.
If you are targeting the ‘make money online’ niche, then the first thing I would say is it is a crowded market and will take a lot of hard work and effort to master it.
But for starters, Click Bank is a good affiliate network to begin with. But, as for the quality statement, I personally use it to look out for low-quality products to warn people about. You will always find products that promise the earth, seem quite scammy and you know why? It is normally because they are.
We need to warn people about the bad products, just as much as the good products.
These are the top affiliate networks out there and I would recommend you check them out.
Want to Find Success with Affiliate Marketing?
Starting out in Affiliate Marketing requires a lot of time and focus. But you also need to ensure your efforts are going into the right actions to ensure long term success.
There is more to signing up to an affiliate program, promoting a few products and then hoping that it ends up earning you a ton of money.
I have found there are a few things that you need to remain focused during those difficult first few months when you are not seeing any reward (yet!).
The Right Education for Affiliate Marketing Success
There is so much to learn when it comes to affiliate marketing and not all of it is actually to do with affiliate marketing. You are starting an online business, so there are elements that you will need to master on top of learning affiliate marketing.
Website Design
Search Engine Optimisation
Getting Traffic to Your Website
Creating Content that Converts
If you stick with my suggestion you will get a comprehensive guide to achieving success with your online business within affiliate marketing
Expert Help & Support On Hand Anytime
Starting an online business can seem really lonely, and if you are ever stuck you tend to only have a google search to help… That doesn’t always help, and I prefer a two-way conversation with some real experts in online business. If I am ever stuck (we all get stuck at some point) I just reach out to my fellow members on Wealthy Affiliate. Wealthy Affiliate offers outstanding training, expert help and support and some awesome tools to help make sure your online affiliate marketing business gets started the right way and scale it to the point where you are really seeing success with it.
Getting the right training, right support and using awesome tools to achieve it correctly, Wealthy Affiliate is the right start for a new affiliate marketer.
When I first stumbled onto the concept of affiliate marketing, the whole landscape seemed alien to me. Starting a website, writing articles, even applying for affiliate programs or finding them. Without Wealthy Affiliate’s training and support, I would not be where I am today.
So if you are still looking at making your affiliate marketing business a reality, but still not 100% sure what you are doing with it. I would highly recommend Wealthy Affiliate. With a free starter membership, you can fully experience the platform, the training, the support and even get 2 free websites included. No need to enter any credit card details and no catch. If you find that it is not what you are looking for, then just log out and good luck to you on your affiliate marketing business.
Here is my full Wealthy Affiliate review, so you can see exactly what it is all about. If you would like to try a free starter membership with Wealthy Affiliate to make up your own mind, then you can join for free here.
Affiliate Marketing is a fantastic way of starting a home-based business and can be a lot of fun when it is in a niche that you are already interested in. But I have found that help and support is really something that you cannot do without. Gem & I love helping new people succeed, but with the training, websites, tools and support that Wealthy Affiliate offer and some guidance from us included then you will soon find that you do not need to search for answers using google that can end up wasting you a lot of time. Get an instant answer from people who know within minutes at Wealthy Affiliate.
Getting the right affiliate marketing program for your niche will definitely depend on what your niche is and the opportunities that lie within that niche. Hopefully you now know how to search for and find affiliate programs in your niche and also how relevance and the quality of your chosen products and services will matter loads.
If you have any questions or would like to share any hints and tips on how to find the best affiliate marketing programs for beginners, then please leave them in the comments below. I will definitely come back to your as soon as I can and good luck in your search.
We would all love to find a program that would make us a millionaire, but is this program really all it makes out it is?
There are opportunities with Internet Marketing, but it’s never as easy as the guys behind these programs claim it can. So, what does the Coffee Shop Millionaire have to offer? Let’s find out.
First off, it’s great to see that you’re doing your research before buying into any “seemingly good” product.
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